Zhongshan, Chungshan, or Jhongshan is a common name of Chinese roads, usually in honor of Sun Yat-sen, better known in Chinese as "Sun Chungshan (Zhongshan)", who is considered by many to be the "Father of Modern China".
In Chinese cities, "Zhongshan Road" is often one of a city's principal roads. As a result, the road is often very long and divided into numbered sections. In Guangzhou, the Zhongshan Road is separated into eight sections, identified as the First Zhongshan Road to the Eighth Zhongshan Road. In Shanghai, Zhongshan Road stretches around the whole city, the road is divided into numerous sections, identified by a direction and a number, such as the East-1 Zhongshan Road.
In some exceptional cases, a "Zhongshan Road" can have other significance. Zhongshan Road in Shijiazhuang, for example, is named after the Zhongshan state and later commandery, not Sun Yat-sen.
Sun Yat-sen, a leader of the Republican revolution of the early 20th century, was remembered in China with great fervor after his death in 1925, and especially after his Kuomintang party re-unified China in 1928. As a result, numerous monuments were erected in his honor throughout China, and a large number of streets, parks and schools, and even his birth city (Zhongshan, Guangdong) were renamed in his honor.
When the Republic of China government took over Taiwan at the end of World War II, the practice of naming streets and parks after Sun, and erecting monuments in his honor, spread to the island as well.
Between 1928 and 1949, in a move designed to parallel the adulation of Sun, a number of roads and institutions were named "Zhongzheng", after Chiang Kai-shek, also known as "Jiang Zhongzheng", who saw himself as the successor to Sun.
In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took control in mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China. Over the following years, streets and institutions named "Zhongzheng" were renamed, but Zhongshan Roads were not renamed, and survived "revolutionary" name changes in the Cultural Revolution. A conventional practice developed where no streets would be named after a political leader, except for Sun Yat-sen. In mainland China today, Sun Yat-sen remains the only modern politician commemorated in road names: no Communist leader, such as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, shares this privilege.
In Taiwan, Zhongshan (more commonly and locally spelled as "Jhongshan" or "Chungshan") Roads are as ubiquitous, if not more, compared to mainland China. In recent years, the administrative merging of neighboring towns have sometimes resulted in duplicate Zhongshan Roads within the same locality, and as a result some such roads have been renamed.
Yixian (逸仙), another name of Sun Yat-sen equivalent to the common English version of "Yat-sen", is also a popular road name. In Shanghai, Yixian Road connects the Inner and Outer Ringroad expressways.
Two roads in Macau SAR were built in the name of Sun Yat-sen, in honor of Sun, who lived in Macau during his lifetime. One road is called Avenida Dr. Sun Yat-sen, located at the southern part of Macau Peninsula. The other road has the same name Avenida Dr. Sun Yat-sen, located in Taipa. While the official Portuguese name of the two roads are the same, the Chinese names are different. There is also a traffic roundabout, called Rotunda Dr. Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙博士圓形地) joins two sections of the Avenida Dr. Sun Yat-sen (Taipa) as well as the Avenida de Guimarães (基馬拉斯大馬路).
A street in Medan, Indonesia also named in honor of him, named as Jalan Sun Yat-Sen. There is a 16-floor hotel nearby called Citi International Sun Yat-Sen Hotel, named after the street itself.
"Sun Yat Sen Street" in central Calcutta of West Bengal, India, is also named in honor of Sun. The street is located in the part of Calcutta known as the Old China Town. The area once hosted nearly 20,000 ethnic Chinese residents, and although the ethnic Chinese population has drastically declined to 1–2,000, the area remains popular among Bengalis because of its unique street market and Chinese breakfast hub, Tiretta Bazaar.There is also a street named Dr Sun Yat Sen Street on the Island of Mauritius.
The literal meaning of the characters zhong and shan are "Central/Middle" and "Mountain"; the name was adopted by Sun Yat-sen while in Japan in the early 1900s. For more information on the names of Sun Yat-sen, see Names of Sun Yat-sen.